The thin ice under nuclear regulatory independence

In this space I have written before about the importance of nuclear regulatory agencies being fully independent. Fukushima showed that a lack of independence leads to complacency and that complacency adds to the complexity of nuclear accidents when they happen.

In 2009, the Euratom Treaty adopted a rule on regulatory independence: Section 5(2) of the Nuclear Safety Directive (2009/71/Euratom) says: "Member States shall ensure that the competent regulatory authority is functionally separate from any other body or organisation concerned with the promotion, or utilisation of nuclear energy, including electricity production, in order to ensure effective independence from undue influence in its regulatory decision making." The nearest you can get to violating this rule is by promoting nuclear yourself.

Yet promoting nuclear seems to be what the president of the Polish Nuclear Energy Agency (PAA) Janusz Włodarski is doing. Currently, he faces a push from Polish politicians and the nuclear lobby to introduce nuclear power in what is now a nuclear-free country. Quotes attributed to Mr. Włodarski in the Japanese magazine "Rising" are more than sufficient reason for concern: "Nuclear energy is clean energy, environmentally friendly. Even if something like the Fukushima disaster were to happen [again], Poland wants to implement nuclear power."

A PR spokesperson for PAA, Monika Kaczyńska, has used Twitter to suggest that the Japanese translation of the second sentence attributed to Mr. Włodarski was wrong: She tweeted that instead of "wants to implement", Mr. Włodarski said "is interested in". Well, all my Japanese sources disagree. It may of course have been that Mr. Włodarski's second sentence was not translated well from Polish into Japanese.

"Implemented" or "interested", either is of course distasteful to the victims of Fukushima. But what did Mr. Włodarski really mean, since in her attempt to clarify Ms. Kaczyńska did not address the first sentence that appears to promote nuclear energy. And a nuclear regulator who calls nuclear energy "clean" and "environmentally friendly" is definitely going beyond his mandate.

Mr. Włodarski has used the arguments that Polish politicians use to try to massage the opinion of the majority of Poles who know that nuclear energy is not clean and not environmentally friendly, and that Fukushima is an ongoing catastrophe.

Now that we're at it, Ms. Kaczyńska has only started tweeting recently and one of the few tweets was (translated from Polish) "1/2 Systematically get information about the state of the sea water around the plant in #Fukushima; 2/2 Radioactive concentrations are below standards. There is no radiological risk to humans and the environment in the waters around #Fukushima". Uhuh? 'Below standards' does not equal 'no risk'. That is a basic issue that a nuclear regulator – any person working for a nuclear regulator – should know. The levels in seawater do not include hot spots and bio-accumulation. Language that plays down the effects of catastrophes like Fukushima is part of nuclear promotion, not of the independent provision of information.

Nothing in Mr. Wlodarski's bio suggests he is not an independent president of the nuclear regulator. But slips of the tongue like the ones described here should not happen. What has worked in countries like France and Germany is to have among your staff people who are critical of nuclear power – people who can point out that what one hears every day in the nuclear village is more propaganda then fact. Maybe a suggestion for Poland.

Unless, of course, Mr. Włodarski stands fully behind the quotes. In that case, it is time to look for someone else to fill his position. What we need at PAA is someone who can prevent the Polish nuclear industry from getting away with a nuclear power station that is built on propaganda rather than hard fact. Because such a nuclear power station could well become the next Fukushima.

Jan Haverkamp is a Greenpeace expert consultant on nuclear energy and energy policy and is based in Gdańsk and Prague.

Jan Haverkamp is nuclear energy and energy policy specialist for Greenpeace and professional group facilitator.

His previous work as energy campaigner and developer of environmental organisations in Central Europe brought him into contact with nuclear power and energy policy in countries across the globe. He also worked for four years as Greenpeace's EU nuclear policy advisor in Brussels. He teaches 'facilitation of environmental communication processes' and 'the role of environmental NGOs in society' at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. His academic background is in biochemistry, nuclear physics, environmental sciences and social and communication psychology. He has two children and lives in Gdansk, Poland.

1,070 Bq/Kg of Cesium-134/137 detected from fish 2km offshore of Fukushima plant / Over 10 times much as safety limit
December 18th, 2013 Fukush...

1,070 Bq/Kg of Cesium-134/137 detected from fish 2km offshore of Fukushima plant / Over 10 times much as safety limit
December 18th, 2013 Fukushima Diary
1,070 Bq/Kg of Cesium-134/137 was measured from fish “outside” of Fukushima plant port. It suggests the contamination is leaking out of the plant port.
The sample was “Banded dogfish”. The sampling location was 2km offshore of Fukushima plant.
The measured Cs-134/137 level is over 10 times much as Japanese food safety level.
The marine products survey is regularly conducted by Tokyo Electric. However, it is not announced if they really publish all the sampling data without choosing. The test results are not inspected by the third party organization either.
http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/12/1070-bqkg-of-cesium-134137-detected-from-fish-2km-offshore-of-fukushima-daini-over-10-times-much-as-safety-limit/
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/f1/smp/2013/images/fish02_131218-e.pdf

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CaptD
says:

I agree and it is not just the NRC but also the other regulators of US Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) that are failing the publics trust, here is a Calif...

I agree and it is not just the NRC but also the other regulators of US Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) that are failing the publics trust, here is a California example:

Our ***public utilities*** are hiding both their operational failures and their fiscal mismanagement of San Onofre NPP from public scrutiny, by claiming that most of what they do (and have done) is proprietary information!

This legal excuse has been allowed far too often by both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) who is charged with regulating operational safety and the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) who is charged with regulating the fiscal operation of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). Even during the CPUC's current investigations into the "*reasonableness of SCE's decisions*" that led up to the multi-billion dollar San Onofre decommissioning, which was caused by SCE's in-house replacement steam generator design failure, those seeking to publicize exactly what went wrong, exactly who exactly at SCE make those decisions and when they were made, have be refused access to un-redacted documents by SCE, SDG&E, the CPUC and the NRC!

This is a key issue because without un-redacted documents, those seeking to protect ratepayers from getting stuck with the bill for SCE's engineering debacle are essentially fighting with one hand tied behind their back, having to depend upon whistle blowers and others that have provided personal copies of important documents to go along with Utility provided *sanitized* redacted documents. It is also important to mention that it is not only citizen groups like **ANC** and locally the **[Coalition to Decommission San Onofre][1] (CDSO)** are having problems with the CPUC but even CA Senator Boxer has now asked the NRC for [**a full and complete set of San Onofre documents**][2] having received informational packets from them with two different document listings, many of which were not provided, even though Senator Boxer Chairs the Committee on Environmental and Public Works, which oversee the NRC!

Since the CPUC is charged with insuring equal treatment of BOTH ratepayers and the Utilities that serve them. It is painfully obvious that the ratepayers have been stuck with borderline criminally unsafe Utility decisions that have resulted in the early decommissioning of San Onofre NPP, which will result in Billions of dollars of decommissioning costs, much of which have not yet been collected, the cost of which must surely be paid only by the Utility(s) that caused them, since they, not the ratepayers made these poor financial decisions without any input from ratepayers who have no oversight over them...